Monday Night: 'Mark's Law' Part of Gun Bill

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"Mark's Law" was part of the comprehensive gun control bill headed for a vote in the state legislature after a day of negotiations Monday.

That's according to a spokesman for state Senator Patty Ritchie, who was the chief sponsor of Mark's Law in the state senate. However, it was not clear whether the name "Mark's Law" was part of the formal bill.

The state senate was expected to vote on the gun control measure, possibly as soon as Monday night.

"Mark's Law," named after slain Cape Vincent emergency medical technician Mark Davis, would make killing a 'first responder' to an emergency scene a crime punishable by life without parole. The law was being referred to Monday night in Albany as the 'Webster provision,' after the two volunteer firefighters in Webster NY who were ambushed and killed on Christmas Eve day.

It passed in the state senate in 2011, but stalled in the state assembly and appeared headed to the same fate this year before word of its inclusion in the broader gun control bill.

The gun control bill would be the nation's first gun control measure following last month's Connecticut school shooting.

The bill will include a strengthened ban on assault weapons, will restrict ammunition magazines to seven bullets from the current 10 and will institute harsher penalties for gun crimes.

The legislation would also "require mental health professionals to report to law enforcement when a patient is deemed to be dangerous, and would allow the state to revoke or suspend any gun license held by that patient," the New York Times reported. (Full story, with details of the bill, here.)

Earlier, more than a dozen workers drove two hours to Albany to protest the tentative deal for a gun control law they claim will cost 300 to 700 jobs.

The workers say the issue isn't guns, but jobs.

The workers are from the Remington Arms manufacturing facility in Ilion, in the economically hard-hit Mohawk Valley.

Unionized worker Jamie Rudwall, who has a son in second grade, said he was horrified by the shooting deaths at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school.

But, he said, the tentative deal in Albany to tighten a ban on assault rifles will devastate the region because Remington and its 1,200 workers fuel the economy.

Assemblyman Marc Butler, who represents the region, says legislators are using secret meetings to trample the Second Amendment.